Analog-to-digital converters (“ADC”) are used in a variety of applications in order to convert a detected analog signal into a digital signal. Typically, the digital output is a binary number that is proportional to the input. The continuous analog input signal is periodically sampled, and the output is a discrete digital signal. Converting a continuous analog signal to a digital signal requires quantization of the analog input, which can introduce error.
Factors measuring ADC performance include conversion bandwidth and dynamic range (signal-noise-ratio), among other things. The bandwidth of an ADC is characterized primarily by its sampling rate, and the dynamic range of an ADC is influenced by factors such as resolution (number of discrete values output over the range of the analog input values), linearity and accuracy (how well the quantization levels match the true analog signal), etc. The dynamic range of an ADC may be expressed in terms of its effective number of bits.